2 Border Patrol Agents Charged With Stealing Car Parts

Two Border Patrol agents stole $267,000 worth of car parts from the agency’s new sport utility vehicles and bartered them for goods and services from an off-road equipment warehouse, federal officials said Friday.

Elwood Ray Keeran, 40, was arrested Friday at the agency’s Brown Field station in San Diego on charges of conspiracy and theft of government property.

Mark J. Daeumer, 31, a former San Diego agent who has since transferred to New Orleans, was indicted but has not yet been arrested, authorities said.

Keeran, of Chula Vista, pleaded not guilty and was freed on $40,000 bond. His attorney, Sanford Toyen, did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Daeumer and Keeran worked together last spring at a Border Patrol unit charged with retrofitting new sport utility vehicles with special seats, consoles and other parts, according to an indictment unsealed Friday in U.S. District Court.

The Border Patrol assigns agents to the unit when they are injured or there is a backlog of new equipment, said agency spokesman Roy Villareal.

Keeran and Daeumer stole dozens of seats and consoles from Ford Expeditions, Chevrolet Tahoes and Ford Windstar minivans in a warehouse and delivered them to Off Road Warehouse in El Cajon, where they were to be sold to the public, according to the indictment.

The agents were to receive “goods and services” from the warehouse manager in exchange for the parts, but the indictment did not give specifics.

A man who answered the phone at Off Road Warehouse said the manager no longer works at the store and referred questions to a regional manager, who did not return a phone call seeking comment.

The Justice Department’s office of the inspector general began investigating Daeumer and Keeran after receiving an anonymous tip, said Joseph Artes, the agent in charge of the office’s San Diego operation.

The two had worked in the retrofitting unit since early 1997.

Keeran and Daeumer, of Slidell, La., joined the Border Patrol in 1994. Daeumer has since transferred to Louisiana, where he works as a senior officer at an Immigration and Naturalization Service detention center.

If convicted, they could receive up to five years in prison for conspiracy and 10 years for theft of government property, and could be fined $250,000 for each count.